Happiness

Great run. Great food. Super productive morning of work. Super productive afternoon of house work. Simple delicious dinner. Sunshine. No dishes to do. Evening of reading. So thankful!

Shortly after lunch I started on dinner, which needed time to chill in the fridge. I really love making dinner at lunchtime. It saves having to do the dishes twice and takes away that guesswork of not knowing when you’ll be hungry to start cooking.

The kitchen was a disaster after three meals! (FYI, my sink never looks like this 🙂 ) I had dirtied the blender and the food processor!

PRETTY!!! I got rid of the stuff we never, ever use. Those turntables (from BB&B) are cabinet geniuses.

I put Matt to work on his grilling and misc. drawer and the cooking supplies drawer. He was very cooperative.

While I was working, UPS delivered a package of Tazo Tea! I have always been a huge fan of their teas (I lived in Awake in college) so I was excited to find some teas in the box. These are three new kinds – two iced teas and one Cucumber White hot tea.

I made a mug of Zen Green while I worked to hopefully knock away my headache. I also took an Advil, so I don’t know what cured it, but let’s pretend it was the tea 🙂

To add to my make-in-advance day, I made some iced tea for dinner.

It was delicious – much more flavorful than the usual teas I’ve made iced. I could definitely taste the hints of citrus. The box of 6 goes for $4.79, which might be a bit pricey for everyday, but if you’re having company over, I would say it’s worth the cost. It was definitely a stand out.

WIN Some Tazo!

Tazo offered to give tea packages of the new flavors to 3 winners! Leave a comment with your favorite kind of tea to enter 🙂 You’ve got until lunch tomorrow to enter.

*Please note I won’t be answer>ing comments on this post due to high volume*

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It was totally awesome to sit down to dinner with the kitchen looking like this!!

The cold noodle salad was great. I took about 4 ounces of whole wheat spaghetti (soba would have been awesome, but the last time I tried to buy it it was $5 a package compared to $2 for the WW pasta…) and tossed it cooked with broccoli (1 crown, fresh), edamame (1/2 cup frozen), and sugar snap peas (1.5 cups frozen). There was supposed to be bean sprouts too but they were brown and slimy when I got them out to add 🙁

I Tweeted a bunch of you for nut butter sauce ideas and based on the recommendations and what I had in my newly organized cabinet, I shook this together in a jar:

1. i love all tazo tea but especially passion
2. i usually get my soba noodles at an asian market where there are quite cheap. try to find one in your area-they’re great places not just for soba!
3. I have that shirt and It ROCKS!! Bo is a pretty cool cat too!

Love the turntable organizers. I usually pick them up at garage sales for 50 cents. Have them in every one of my food cabinets. I enjoy the subtle flavor of white teas. Thanks for sharing all your fabulous food choices.

Mmm, free tea! My favorite kind of tea is any blend of jasmine and green tea; I also have a black tea with a hint of rose and marzipan that my fiance proposed to me with. It’s got a special place in my heart. 😀

I love Bigelow Vanilla Caramel and I also love Tazo’s Apple Red – reminds me of fall when I drink it. I’m a big fan of sweeter teas, though I love Earl Grey and English Breakfast too.
In all truth, I LOVE any tea.

My very favorite tea at home is Twig Tea by Choice Organic Teas with milk and Splenda, but when I go to a coffee place I order Awake.
Love the looks of your kitchen. White cabinets with black counter is perfect. Nice to see somebody who doesn’t have the same stainless appliances as everyone else.

Hi Kath! I also love the Tazo Awake — I have a box of it in my desk drawer at work. I dug into it today, in fact! Crazy how even when it’s super hot and humid outside I sometimes crave afternoon tea because the office is frigid!! I also like mint tea and am still looking for a favorite. I plan to try as many as possible when the weather gets chilly again! 🙂

This is a great giveaway! Thanks so much. I’m a fairly new reader. Anyway, my favorite type of tea is mint green tea, which I became addicted to while living in Egypt for five months. I love a glass of cold iced tea, in any unsweetened flavor.

I love just about anything from Teavana. Anytime I can get there I buy a bunch of several varieties. One of my favorites is their Mate vana with some vanilla creamer. Feeds my need for caffiene and strong flavor without coffee.

i love chai teas, but i also have a strong attachment to orange spice tea with honey. as a kid, whenever i was sick, my mom would make me orange tea with a bit of honey, and it was delicious and always made me feel better.

lately I’ve been really into using loose raspberry black tea leaves to make iced tea–with a little agave nectar (I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to get away from my Southern roots and drink unsweetened tea…). Yum!

I’m a big fan of green and white teas. Although I a fruity iced tea during the summer… my current fav is from the Portsmouth Tea Company, Geisha Green…. its a blended green tea with flavors of coconut and pineapple… so good!

Zen is my favorite Tazo tea, although Passion, and Orange are close runners-up. I am getting my master’s in linguistics while teaching full time, and have class until 10pm and Tazo Zen is what gets me through it!

What a coincidence! i stopped at THREE different markets today to purchase a sampler box of Tazo teas–and wouldn’t you know it, all THREE markets only had expired boxes stocked on the shelves!!! I had to pass on paying full price for expired merchandise, so I’d be just delighted to win some Tazo this week. Thanks for the opportunity Kath!

I’m a big fan of the loose leaf teas from Teavana!! 🙂 Yum! I really really like Yorkshire Gold English Breakfast Tea though too. I am a huge tea fan though, so there isn’t much I don’t like! Glad you had such a good and productive day! Those are the best kinds!

I am absolutely in love with Tazo Zen tea. I love it iced or hot, I make it at home all the time, but I especially love to stop at Starbucks on hot days and get a huge unsweetened iced zen tea, soooo good!!

I am absolutely in love with Tazo Zen tea. I love it iced or hot, I make it at home all the time, but I especially love to stop at Starbucks on hot days and get a huge iced Zen tea, so so good! I just love the blend.

I love the Awake flavor! I am in college and dont drink coffee so tea is amazing! I would love to try the iced black kind if I happen to win though =) Oh and made your gazpacho today, good stuff! I will be mentioning it on my food blog

Hi Hi! The ice tea would be so refreshing with slices of frozen peach! My favorite tea is black tea. I used to love putting hazelnut coffeemate in my black tea, but now I need to find a yummy alternative. Any suggestions?

Favorite tea in general?…. well, I have the fortune of having parents who are expats in Beijing, China (the tea captial) and I have fallen madly in love with 100 yr old Pu-Ehr tea (yes, it IS aged and graded like wine vintages).

I like to blend green and mint teas together for iced tea brews. It’s a cool and refreshing combo. My favorite tea overall has to be the “To Life” blend of Tevana tea. Its a mix of white, red and green teas and is subtly sweet and awesome iced!

My favorite tea is raspberry green tea, but drinking Yogi bedtime tea brings back lovely memories from two winters ago when I was having trouble falling asleep and tried it as a remedy. The smell takes me right back to curling up on a couch with the dogs and reading Water for Elephants. It definitely makes me happy and feel very relaxed 🙂

Hi Kath, I’ve made a similar noodle salad before. I LOVE the combo! I never added edamame to mine though, thanks for the idea. My favorite kind of tea at the moment is actually Tazo iced passion tea. It’s so refreshing on a hot summer day! Thanks for the contest!

I’m on your page with the Awake . . . but sometimes, later in the day when I don’t want caffeine and I client or one of my employees has me all riled up . . . I go for the Calm! . . . I’ve even started having Calm before bed every night

I have recently tried to kick my coffee addiction. And green tea is what has helped me do it! I just love having something warm and comforting with me at the office in the morning. Right now I am hooked on Bigelow Organic Green Tea, but that is because I got a big box for cheap at Costco! I would love to try some Tazo tea!

Just visited a darling tea room for brunch on vacation and found my new favorite tea: Blue Sapphire (black tea w/ a tropical coconut kick to it!)
It sounded amazing so I was going to get a mini-pot despite the heat but it ended up being the featured iced tea of the day. So lucky! And so delicious.

Oh my gosh, I can’t choose one flavor! I love the zen and the berry white if I need an afternoon pick-me-up. Passion fruit is great before bed. Awake is nice in the morning. I like pretty much anything except chai.

Glad the peanut sauce turned out well-I love eating cold peanut noodles, it’s a staple in Chinese cuisine. We make it with shredded carrots and napa cabbage, ground beef, noodles and peanut sauce with peanuts over the top

I love tons of kinds of tea but Tazo teas are definitely my favorite. They have so much flavor and really taste like the way you would expect them to without being too strong. I love Awake when I need a wake up call, Zen at work and Calm before I go to bed. (I may or may not be drinking white vanilla apricot right now!) Yum! I love Tazo teasssssssssss! I will have to try the cucumber one.